Yes, it was very condescending and sanctimonious. But perhaps not directed at you, but just the average turkey hunter I encounter while in the woods both in TN as well as MS. I deserve a little of that condescension, as I was too lazy to take the effort to fully explain how to improve your property for decades to come. So, with that being said... get ready for a small book.
First of all, turkeys need more hunters to be 'producers' rather than 'consumers'. What I mean by that is we all have a part to play to ensure turkeys are available for ourselves as well as future generations. Sure, we are here to take the surplus to eat, but it should never be beyond surplus males, and we must be extremely careful not to overharvest the resource.
An average spring gobbler has around 500 acres he uses as his home turf. But they frequently relocate to a completely new 500 ac home territory if there are no available hens, or the habitat will not support him. In that 500 acre home range, he will spend the majority of his time on the very best portion of habitat.. maybe only 40- 50 acres. Even then, he will roost in the same tree on consecutive nights only 20% of the time, but he will have 4 or 5 favorite roosting spots he bounces around to in that home range. He wants to gobble to let other toms who have established home ranges around him to stay away, as well as gobble to attract hens to check him out to see if he is the fittest to mate with.
While he is doing his thing, the hens are also doing their thing. Specifically looking for the fittest male to mate with, while at the same time selecting for habitat which will provide to most likely ability to successfully establish a nest, incubate and hatch a clutch, and then provide food for that clutch in the form of insects. Hens become very territorial toward each other after establishing a nest, and because of that, will usually space nests away from one another by at least 200 yards. While laying, hens must water daily, often times multiple times a day. Cover is needed for successful incubation, as well as ample food (but adult turkeys can eat just about anything... the food part is the easiest to provide for). Poults need protein, LOTS of it. Because they feather out so fast for survival compared to other poultry, it is impossible to provide enough protein from plant sources. So they must have insects. They also need habitat they can easily move through. If a hen successfully hatches a clutch and she must travel more than 800 yards in the first day of life to take the poults to the habitat they require, the mortality of that brood is 100%.
So... back to being a 'producer' rather than a 'consumer'... what can you do to ensure your 100 acres is the best habitat to attract the most birds and provide for the best chance for poult production? #1- provide a water source. If you have a pond or creek on your property, you are fine already. If you don't, dig one. #2- habitat diversity.... the more diverse the better. Open hardwoods, small manicured fields or pastures, small food plots, dense thickets, areas with early secessional growth from prior burns, etc. As many in a mosaic on your 100 acres. #3- trap nest predators and hunt coyotes. Nest predators need to be your main focus from the end of deer season until the end of trapping season. Get a half dozen DP racoon traps and run them, and run them, and run them. Then focus on the coyotes in March. The more you remove, the better. #4- make sure you do not remove the majority of males from an area. A general rule of thumb is to not remove more than 25% of toms until mid April, then another 25% in the second half of the season... but never more than 50% of the total toms in the area. Sure, it's hard to know exactly how many available toms there are in the spring, but I've found you can get a pretty good guesstimate with hours spent afield just before and during the season. (DO NOT BASE THE NUMBER OF TOMS AVAILABLE TO HARVEST BASED ON WINTERTIME BACHELOR GROUPS!... those birds come spring may be as many as 4 or 5 miles away and not available to breed your local hens.) It's hard to do #4... the hunter/ 'consumer' in us all wants to take as many birds as possible, especially before our neighbor kills them all. Or wants to take as many off public land because if we don't, someone else will. I'm guilty of it when I'm not on my TN farms. But I have been able to show a lot of restraint over the decades while on my TN farms... for example, I shut all hunting down for 2 weeks on 2000 acres scattered out over 5 farms after we killed 4 birds in the first 3 days of the season. Opened back up mid April and removed another 3 birds in 3 days... Then now shut down for the remainder of the season. I still have toms with hens, breeding hens, and giving hens the best chance for fertile nests.
In your specific example, the most bothersome thing about what you've said is that you've seen 4 hens on the neighbor's property. If you meant you saw 4 single hens in different areas, that's OK, it's just the ladies taking a break off the nest to get a drink or bite to eat. But if you saw 4 hens together with no gobbler around... well, that means you've already overharvested your local area. Maybe another tom will travel off from a distant property to service them, but if not, or a different hen loses her nest and attempts to renest, there may not be a tom available to ensure a successful mating/ fertilization.
So... back to my comment in a previous post... 'probably too much work'.... for most hunters, I stand by that comment. I hope you are different and want to be a 'producer' rather than a 'consumer'
